New Directions

The Public Option for Insurance – How about One for Banks Too?

In many of America’s large cities there are tall skyscrapers, and if you look at who owns the tallest of the skyscrapers you will often find that they are owned either by a major bank or a major insurance company. If you care to think about that for a few moments I’m pretty sure you’ll see that there is the message there. You can get the same message by noting that the tallest skyscrapers are never owned by shoe manufacturers, food companies, or clothing companies. Some types of businesses just make a lot more profit than others – the top two seem to be banks and insurance companies. Which brings me to the “public option”.

The recent economic catastrophe was essentially caused by the banks in those big, tall skyscrapers making really bad bets, i.e. loaning money for real estate loans that would never be repaid. In the end the solution our representatives in DC came to was for the government, i.e. you and me, to absorb these losses, give the banks a bunch of money and set them back up in their chairs at the financial craps table. Some have already paid back the loan you and I gave them and some haven’t. So, in a way we sort of own those banks that haven’t repaid the loan we made to them. Of course it is these banks who essentially own our houses because they gave us a loan to buy them and we haven’t paid that off yet. It’s all sort of circular isn’t it? Sort of hard to figure out who ultimately really owns what and who owes what to whom. The key though seems to be that the banks have to stay in business, so you really do have to pay your mortgage to the bank and you really do have to pay your taxes in order for the government to pay for the loans we made to the banks. The point is this: you have to pay.

So what does this have to do with health insurance? Well, insurance is a lot like banking. The health insurance company bets that you’ll be healthy and you bet that you won’t. Both the banking and the insurance industry rely on making good bets. However, the health insurance industry has one great advantage over the banking industry. With insurance you only pay out a bunch of money when something bad happens to the your health – meanwhile you keep paying the insurance company a lot of money. In mortgage banking it’s sort of the opposite. The bank pays out a big lump sum up front and then collects it back – multiplied by a factor of four or five – over 30 years. The bank is taking a big risk though because you might not pay them back. It would seem that the insurance companies are also taking a big risk too because you might get a catastrophic disease. So isn’t it all sort of the same? I could be, but it isn’t. The insurance companies have learned about a thing called denial of benefits – it’s all in the fine print. Basically, a lot of them don’t pay off when a catastrophe happens. They manage to find a pre-existing condition or some other excuse to disqualify you. So, they make out like bandits and build big skyscrapers. But don’t feel too bad for the banks, because they have an out too: if you don’t pay your mortgage they just grab your house and sell it. Then they take their big profits and build big skyscrapers.

So what does this have to do with a Public Option? The Public Option for insurance essentially makes the government an insurance company – which is to say that we, the taxpayers, are insuring ourselves with all the money we put in our tax dollars pot in DC. The government makes no profit – and why would it? If we are the government then profiting from ourselves would just be like taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another. A government-run insurance option is essentially non-profit insurance for everyone. It is cheap and efficient and people don’t get denied coverage just because they got sick.

So why don’t we have a banking public option? Good idea. It’s because the banking lobby is too strong and they have paid off too many people in our government. The best way to run a bank is to make it government-run and non-profit. At least that is the best way for the taxpayers; however, you probably wouldn’t have so many skyscrapers anymore. We are a long way away from the government running our banking system – for the time being our government would rather just use our money to provide the banks with multi-billion dollar loans. But perhaps after our next economic meltdown (and it will come, don’t worry, all of the factors that caused the past one and the one that caused the Great Depression before it are still in place) maybe, just maybe, the government at that future time will have the courage and insight to suggest a public option for banks.

Meanwhile, it looks like the citizens of America may soon have to choose whether they want to buy expensive insurance from companies that build big skyscrapers with their profits when they don’t pay off on their policies, or will they choose to buy low-cost health insurance backed up by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government? I have a feeling there is going to be a rush to buy the public option. Meanwhile, the insurance companies might start considering whether they could convert their posh offices into city apartments and rent them out, since they probably won’t be needing all that office space much longer.

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